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COT Forex | CFTC's Commitments of Traders

COT Tool and Information from Oanda:

Net non-commercial positions for major currency

These graphs show the CFTC's Commitments of Traders (COT) weekly data: net positions for "non-commercial" (speculative) traders in the U.S. forex futures markets, along with open interest contracts held by all parties. This futures data influences and is influenced by the spot forex market, and is considered an indicator for analyzing market sentiment.

About Commitments of Traders

The Commitments of Traders (COT) is a report issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It aggregates the holdings of participants in the U.S. futures markets (primarily based in Chicago and New York), where commodities, metals, and currencies are bought and sold. The COT is released every Friday at 3:30 Eastern Time, and reflects the commitments of traders for the prior Tuesday.

The COT provides a breakdown of aggregate positions held by three different types of traders: “commercial traders” (in forex, typically hedgers), “non-commercial traders” (typically, large speculators), and “nonreportable” (typically, small speculators).

The Net Non-Commercial Positions shown in the chart above are from contracts held by large speculators, mainly hedge funds and banks trading currency futures for speculation purposes. Speculators are not able to deliver on contracts and have no need for the underlying commodity or instrument, but buy or sell with the intention of closing their “sell” or “buy” position at a profit, before the contract becomes due. These contracts, sold in lot sizes that vary by currency, net out to have either a surplus of buy requests (positive values in the chart) or sell requests (negative values).

The Open Interest represents the total number of contracts, including both buy and sell positions, outstanding between all market participants. That is, the total of all futures and/or option contracts entered into and not yet offset by a transaction, by delivery, by exercise, and so on. These figures are not netted, but instead show overall volume (that is, interest).

Note: In the futures market, the foreign currency is always quoted directly against the U.S. dollar. In the spot forex market, some currencies are quoted the opposite way. For consistency, these graphs provide futures market position data on a reverse axis (with negative values above the 0-axis) whenever the quote order is opposite the spot forex notation. This is the case for the Swiss Franc, for example, which in forex is quoted against the US dollar (USD/CHF).

This is for general information purposes only - Examples shown are for illustrative purposes and may not reflect current prices from OANDA. It is not investment advice or an inducement to trade. Past history is not an indication of future performance.

Helpful Hints

Commitments of Traders (COT) video from Oanda explains how the Weekly non-commercial trading statistics in the United states futures market, plotted against currency rates to illustrate forex sentiment.